melancholia

MELANCHOLIA, med. jur. A name given by the ancients to a species of partial
intellectual mania, now more generally known by the name of monomania.
(q.v.) It bore this name because it was supposed to be always attended by
dejection of mind and gloomy ideas. Vide Mania.,

In conclusion, as one of the clearest examples of the meaning behind Consolo's writing of melancholy, the ekphrastic description of Albrecht Durer's Melencolia I confirms the necessity of distinguishing Consolo's works from dominant modes of postmodernist writings.

The unsuspecting reader could easily skip over such a seemingly unimportant detail, but it leads us back to Volpi's previous novel, El temperamento melancolico (1995), and we realize that it refers to Durer's painting Melencolia I, which contains the famous magic square.

might be slangily translated as "Don't be too sure," reminds us while praising Hugh Trevor-Roper's Men and Ideas that history should give "pleasure and instruction," notes that Erwin Panofsky's 15 pages on Durer's famous print Melencolia are this distinguished scholar's "critical masterpiece," suggests that Moliere's Misanthrope may be "the comedy of comedies," and proclaims Bernard Shaw "the greatest master of English prose since Swift.

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